May 12
The Index
1 result(s)
- Hank Willis Thomas - Pitch Blackness - Aperturehighlight
1- Winter in America, Two Guns
2- Branded, Priceless #1, 2004
3- Branded, A Bullet with His Name on It, 2004
4- Studio X, In Loving Memory of, 2007
5- Book Cover
Hank Willis Thomas, in Pitch Blackness, Aperture, October 08
© Hank Willis ThomasSongha died.
This promising young man, aged 27, was starting to blossom into the person his family had invested so much time and energy into allowing him to become. Pitch Blackness invites us into his childhood, in the middle of family reunions, or at his grandma's, amidst his college friends, in parties with his pal Hank, the same Hank who created this photographic Requiem... Little by little, we get to know him. Ties grow.
Then, Songha died.
He was robbed on a parking lot, then executed by gangsters although he did not resist. His face looks composed on the autopsy picture.
Hank Willis Thomas exposes the event, transcribing it into a comic strip with GI Joe's reprising the role of all protagonists. He also exposes the conditions that surround it, by stripping the text from ads addressed to the African-American market, thus revealing their underlying currents, or by introducing Black characters inside the familiar advertisement campaigns he subverts. The ironic and jarring messages make you laugh, but rage roars beneath every montage. The photographer's ambiguity towards his own community is palpable, as early as the book's title; Pitch Blackness - it's the darkness of being Black.
Naturally, when oneself is a young man of 27 who feels like he hasn't yet lived a minute of his life, the trajectory documented by Hank Willis Thomas strikes even deeper. As one Mr. Obama has shown recently, there are several ways of being Black, and several ways of being White, and a lot of hues in-between. More importantly, you don't have to be a believer to believe in sympathy.
Hank Willis Thomas, Pitch Blackness, Aperture, October 08
